I cannot import the RIS file exported from Reference manager 10

yingxm · November 14, 2007

When I tried to import the RIS file generated from Refman 10, an error occurred with the warning 'An error occurred while trying to import the selected file. Please ensure that the file is valid and try again'. But the RIS file was indeed exported by Refman 10 with RIS format. Can anyone tell me what the problem is?

Bow

csalzman · November 28, 2007

I had this problem too. If you go into the txt-file with an editor you can see that some webadresses have information before and behind the url. These information looks like very small rectangle. I have no idea, where these rectangel come from. If you delete the rectangels bevor the url zotero could import the file. You cannot search directly for these rectangle in the editor, but you can search for 'http' and delete the rectangles by hand.
But: after that I have the problem, that zotero import the authors of edited books in a wrong way. The RIS-file deferes between AU (for Author) and A2 (for secondary Autor), but zotero do not import the A2 as 'editor'. zotero imports this information as 'contributor'. The same problem exist with book-chapters: the editors of the book are labeled with contributor. I didnt find a solution for that problem yet....

csalzman · November 29, 2007

Found a solution for converting a RefMan database into Cotero without the “author/editor” problem:
Download a BibTeX output style from the web, often you must modify the output style via the tool in RefMan (this is the crucial point ;-) ), generate a bibliography in RefMan via the modified output style in a txt-file (do not use the export-tool!), than you can import the txt-file (BibTeX format) into Cotero. I did some modification at the output style that I found in the web and it worked well – but I create the output style for only four reference types (book, book chapter, journal article and thesis).